Weird advertisements are a niche interest of mine. Companies go to odd lengths and come to strange conclusions when it comes to advertising. A perfect example of this was the 2013 advertisement campaign where Domino’s Japan began using branding based around Hatsune Miku.
If you’ve been living under a rock and you don’t know who she is, Hatsune Miku is a popular Japanese vocaloid singer. This means her music is made electronically, and her voice is actually a computer -she’s not a real person, but a digital singer.
Songs, Scooters, and selfies with Miku were all available In the new and improved pizza ordering experience created by the Domino’s App. Feat Hatsune Miku campaign. To fully understand the amount work that went into this obscure marketing scheme, we need to start from the beginning.
The Infamous Commercial
Before we move on, you’ve got to watch the commercial announcing this campaign. There’s something about a middle aged white man talking about Hatsune Miku that’s entertaining to me, maybe because when I think of Miku’s fanbase I think of preteen nerds- basically me in middle school. But for Domino’s Japan, Everyone was eating this up!
Hatsune Miku’s presence in japan is no where near what it is in the states or other places, so while it may seen crazy to you and I reading this, this was a genius marketing move for Domino’s.
The commercial has become a bit of a meme in western culture though. The humor that the west got out of the video was definitely one of the main factors in anyone starting to try to revive this app in the first place.
Domino’s App Feat. Hatsune Miku
Dinner and show, baby! If you’ve ever wanted to watch Hatsune Miku preform on your pizza box while you chow down, this app had all of your needs!
Using augmented reality, the app allowed users to use their back camera aimed at their pizza box to see a performance by the vocaloid icon.
Sadly, this feature was never restored in the archived version of the application.
Domino’s App Feat. Hatsune Miku also had a music player available in the app that would play the songs made for the Domino’s promotion
One section of the app appeared to have unlockable wallpapers. I assume they became unlockable with the more pizza you ordered.
The best part of the app is the loading screen, where you’re greeted by Miku singing a little jingle:
“ Do-min-o’s pii-zaaa!”
The Website
Kudo’s to the graphic designers who worked on this project, they really weren’t playing around!
The website was extremely well made- Miku themed visuals are everywhere! a little Miku even peeks up at you when you scroll down the page.
On the archived website are screenshots of the app that can help us understand what the experience was like. In the screenshot above, you can see a little Miku on the GPS tracking screen.
The website also includes screenshots of the music player and the augmented reality feature.
The Over-The-Top Marketing
If you thought the app was sophisticated marketing, look at this!
Domino’s invested in the money to design and produce these intricate scooters to deliver pizza to it’s customers. I have to point out the leek detailing, I think it’s my favorite touch. Even though it may be a bit gaudy and hard on the eyes, as an artist all I can think about is the time and focus that had to go into the design.
That’s not where it stopped, though.
I love the art on the pizza boxes so much! Even though the boxes are now unobtainable (I checked eBay on the off chance someone kept a used pizza box) I’m sure any Miku collector would love to have these. The top design would make sick poster (it was actually one of the unlockable wallpapers I mentioned before)!
There is actually another scooter design and two more pizza box designs that were produced later. To see for yourself, check out the archived Dominos.miku.jp site.
Rarely today do we see such intricate attention to detail in marketing, which is why these advertisements stick out to me even after all these years.
Anyone who doesn’t know who Miku is wouldn’t appreciate the lengths that Domino’s Japan went to for their Miku-themed marketing, but I’m eating it up all these years later. (Pun Intended.)
The Songs
Songs were produced specifically to advertise the partnership between Miku and Domino’s by members of a group created by domino’s called Vocalo Creative Club. I couldn’t actually find any information focusing on the group in depth, which is really frustrating to me writing this, but it appeared to be a group of artists, musicians, and creative minds appointed by Domino’s to work on the Domino’s App Feat. Hatsune Miku campaign. With that however, there is no information on how Domino’s chose these artists for the project.
Remember how Hatsune Miku’s voice is created with vocaloid technology? I can’t even imagine the time and effort that went into the promotional music. A total of 4 pizza themed songs were produced for this campaign. They were titled ‘Yum Yum Pizza’, ‘SOON!’, ‘Best Driver M’, and ‘Mysterious World’.
For research reasons of course, I’ve taken it upon myself to listen to the track list, and in my opinion it doesn’t even sound like an ad (besides where she explicitly says Domino’s). Compared to the music Miku is known for it’s different, but if you don’t know Japanese fluently then listening to it is just like listening to other obscure Miku songs. (I’m an American who only speaks English, and if I had spoken Japanese I would have translated some lines for both the knowledge of you and I.) Best Driver M is my favorite song by far created for these advertisements, and I’m jamming to it while writing this! :)
The Search For Miku
I’m quite lucky coming back to this story in 2022; those who were interested in it before me had to go to great lengths to find this stuff.
If you heard of Domino’s App Feat. Hatsune Miku previously, you probably learned from Nick Robinson, a youtuber who made a series documenting his journey in finding some of the media lost with the apps deletion. He went as far as to buy an iPhone 5 to be able to log into an apple account where he previously downloaded the app, and from there was able to load it up and use it. From there, with a lot of technical troubleshooting, he made the app public.
Thanks to Nick and other members of the lost media community, you can go download the archived version of the app for yourself here.
Why Was It All Deleted?
Just as with any partnership, we can assume contracts were signed and that there was an end date planned for the campaign to begin with.
The app became unable to use after apple stopped support for 32 bit applications. Even though the app’s code has been salvaged for archiving reasons, the archived version of the app can’t use the augmented reality feature or listen to any of the songs in the song player.
Another thing is with time, the domino’s server hosting the app was deleted because they didn’t need it anymore. I doubt anyone at Domino’s Japan thought that this app would be so beloved by the internet.
According to the archived website, the website went down before October of 2013.
Over time, things simply die out. That’s why people who preserve lost media are so important- if someone doesn’t try to document the things you don’t think twice about, then no one may ever think about them again in the future.
Hatsune Miku is already an incredibly creative concept- a digital superstar! I think that this partnership couldn’t be more fitting for her brand.
Companies have to start working harder in their ad campaigns; researching this one raised my standards!
